Update your iPhone remote control holes revealed by researchers

Google Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich has just published a fascinating blog article entitled The Fully Remote Attack Surface of the iPhone.

This work, carried out by Silvanovich and research colleague Samuel Groß, was also the topic of a presentation she gave at this year’s Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

Silvanovich’s article is technical but not overly so, making it well worth a look even if you don’t have any formal coding experience.

Notably, she reminds us all how easy it is to open up software to remote attacks, even if that software isn’t what you’d conventionally think of as server-side code, and even if it’s running on a device that you wouldn’t think of a server.

By the way, despite the revelatory nature of the article and her talk, there’s no need to panic.

At least, you don’t need to be too worried if you’ve already applied the latest Apple updates, because the holes that Silvanovich is now talking about in detail are already patched.

If you haven’t brought your iPhone up to iOS 12.4 yet, do it now!
Settings → General → Software Update is the quick way to check.